Holy Trinity Church on the town bridge, Weymouth, welcomes their new Director of Music James Lloyd Thomas. His role will be to develop and enhance the music with the choir, public events and concerts in this special place. Holy Trinity is well established and widely regarded as the town’s church, being the main focus for Civic occasions, the RNLI and the fisherman’s mission. The church has big plans and a forward-thinking vision to re-order the church as a result of the sale of St Nicholas site on Buxton Road. As part of this process and at the very heart of worship is the quality of music and liturgy. The church has excellent acoustics due to its size and vast space as testified by many visiting choirs and professional musicians.
We are very fortunate to recruit someone of James’ quality and experience. Previous posts include, Director of Music at Christ Church Cathedral Nelson in New Zealand, Director of Music, Harrow International School Hong Kong and Associate Organist, St John’s Cathedral, Hong Kong and more recently Director of Music at St Thomas’ Stourbridge near Birmingham.
James brings with him his wife Lizzie, a talented soprano and harpist in her own right, who has also made a big impression since moving down to Dorset. As a result of Covid, Holy Trinity have adapted to providing online services and programmes to which James and Lizzie have made a regular contribution. These are set to continue along with our regular attended services at church.
James stated, “since our arrival at the beginning of August Lizzie and I have found the church welcoming, supportive and friendly. And as the church’s strapline says, “bridging the gap between the church and the community” we intend to do this through music”.
Canon Andrew Gough, Vicar at Holy Trinity, said “We are aware that James has a great deal of experience in music from right across the spectrum. He has taught, examined and been a conductor of several orchestras as well as a piano teacher and church director of music and will be a great asset to the life if the church”.
James and Lizzie are looking to recruit people for the choir and also have plans to set up a separate youth choir to build up for performances and festivals within the church. They have big plans for outreach and are open to performing with other choirs for special events and Evensong. They look forward to making contact with our local schools when possible to promote the value of music into the wider community.
As part of their plans for recruitment and restructuring, the church is pleased to be in a position to offer scholarships every year starting as soon as possible due to current Covid restrictions. We are looking at choral and organ scholarships. Holy Trinity is a warm, active and outward looking church wishing to reach out and engage with the community to promote good traditional church music right in the heart of Weymouth.
Our scholarships are open to children and young people who will support the work of the church choir and maintain the standard of liturgy and music tradition in the church. These are skills for life for the right people. The scholarships are quite flexible and offer many opportunities to sing and perform and organise concerts and recitals. To help with this James would like to set up a new Friends of Holy Trinity Music Group open to persons both inside and outside the church congregation.
James and Lizzie are also available to play and sing for weddings, receptions, funerals and baptisms as is the choir. They both host private tuition with organ, piano, harp and singing lessons.
Anyone out there interested? We would love to hear from you. Please contact James via Email: music@holytrinityweymouth.org or Holy Trinity Church on 01305 760354. For further information and contacts please visit www.holytrinityweymouth.org
James Lloyd Thomas
